Life's a game and I lost the rulebook.

Rinnil found himself still smiling slightly at this tiefling woman, and it still felt strange, but he finally decided not to question it any longer. He looked down at the bag of chestnuts as she brought up re-roasting them at a later time with honey. He picked one out and popped it into his mouth. It definitely wasn’t the first time he’d had chestnuts, but it wasn’t exactly a go-to for him when it came to eating. His palette for tastes was pretty much made up of whatever he’d been given in the UnderDark, the orphanage, and the Myrefall thieves’ guild, as well as various tavern meals of varying quality all across Romera. “Yeah, a closet of sweets sounds okay,” he admitted slowly. “Though… sweets isn’t really what I would go for normally.”

Then, it finally occurred to him what he would fill a closet with, if he’d ever had the chance to do so. “Books,” Rinnil said quietly. “Books. If I could fill an entire closet with anything I wanted, I’d fill it with books.” Reading had never been something he’d really been able to devote a lot of his time to throughout his life. But since he’d been staying in Efrain’s manor, he’d found himself spending a lot of time in the library while Thalra rested. He found the room strangely comforting to be in.

Zym tilted her head to the side and regarded the strange person who had made himself at least somewhat comfortable in her company. She wasn’t anyone to judge another person on their peculiarity, but this man seemed to be quite the conundrum. “I think most folks call that a library,” she pointed out with a smirk, though not an unkind one. “But, yeah, I guess that could be pretty nice. I don’t read much, though.”

She fell into silence and it wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. She didn’t generally like silence and preferred bustle and song, but she had nothing more to say. Perhaps the stranger would simply leave as swiftly as he’d come. She munched on her roasted nuts and turned her pale gaze to the growing pile of shells in her skirts. 

Mare watched Zym make her slow circuit around the fountain and tried to not to feel the absence of the other woman beside her like a cold shiver. The warmth of the whisky was beginning to wane, leaving her feeling rather unsteady.  Carefully she lowered herself to perch on the edge of the fountain. As Zym talked about her life as a messenger, Mare brought her hand up to the flower in in her hair, fingertips grazing over the petals carefully, as if afraid she might crush them.  

“Oh.”  She said, the words forming before she’d quite finished processing the question. “I have to be here, I can’t leave.”  She stopped, realizing that might sound rather more dire than she intended. “What I mean is, I have a job to do here, in Khaggon. I have to stay until its finished. and I’m waiting for someone, my friend, we’re supposed to meet here, so. I can’t leave.” Letting out a breath Mare leaned back, she could feel the cool spray of the fountain on the bare skin of her neck. She shivered. 

“Its ok though. Khaggon is a big place, there’s lots to see and learn, I don’t really know many people but I get by just fine on my own. I always have.”  She was saying too much but she wasn’t sure how to stop. “And anyway, now I have this secret garden to visit, so all in all things are looking up.”  Looking up she caught Zym’s eye and grinned. 

“I’m starving!  Are you?  Didn’t you say something about heavenly waffles?” 

"Oh,” was all Zym said in reply to Mareona’s reasons. “I hope your friend returns to you soon,” she murmured, though she was unsure if Mareona heard her or not over the insistent burbling of the fountain. She suddenly, sharply wished that she was waiting for someone. If only she could pin herself in place and await someone who meant to return to her, but no instead she was pursued with hatred and violence and she would have to flee soon. “I’m glad you have the garden to wait in, though,” she said, louder this time. 

“Waffles?” she squeaked, perking up immediately and returning to Mareona’s side in a flurry of movement and smiles. “I’m alway hungry for waffles. They’ll be my treat ‘cause you treated us to the whisky... and treated me to your company!” Without waiting, Zym began tugging Mareona toward the exit and back the way they’d come to the promise of waffles and saccharine syrup. 

Date: January 17 Location: Runswick, the Kristall Ball Time: Evening Staus: Open

Mareona stood at the edge of the dance floor and tried not to worry the fabric of her beautiful dress with anxious fingers. She felt wholly unlike herself, almost as if she had been transported to some fairy realm without realizing it. She certainly felt like some sort of fairy queen. When Zym had suggested they go shopping for party clothes Mare had balked at the idea, but the idea of spending the afternoon with her new friend was too tantalizing to ignore.Two hours later they’d left the shop with an armful of packages and Mare had begun to feel uneasy. What did one do at a ball? She knew some dances, old ones, stately and sweeping. Would anyone ask her to dance? Did she even want them too? She wasn’t sure. She hadn’t said any of this to Zym, the other woman had been so excited Mare hadn’t wanted to bring down the mood with her insecurities, and anyway it had been fun to shop after all. Zym certainly knew her stuff. Carefully she smoothed her hands over the skirt of her dress, the silk like water under her fingers. She felt beautiful. It was an unexpected but not unpleasant sensation.

It wasn’t the first ball she’d attended, but those had only ever been part of a mission for the Lance and her job had usually been to watch from the corner of the room while Jherek made nice with the locals. They’d tried it the other way round once but it had ended with Mare being all but tossed out on her ear for accidentally insulting the mayor’s wife and that had been the last of that. Now she had to keep herself from making visual sweeps of the room at regular intervals, there was no threat lurking here tonight, just good music and gorgeous people. 

Everywhere she looked something glittered, the crystal goblets full of crimson wine, jewels at the throats and wrists of the party goers, the panes of glass that shattered the lamplight into a thousand dancing specks. Before her the dancers swept across the floor, a fantasy of blues and silvers. It was a little overwhelming but she was reluctant to leave, she loved watching the sweep of skirts and the flash of jeweled shoes, the happily flushed faces. It made her feel like a child, giddy at the sight of some particularly sweet treat and she couldn’t stop the little smile that tugged at her lips. She’d have fun tonight. She was determined.

Zym had been twirling about the ball since it began, grabbing reluctant as well as all too willing nobles and commoners alike for dances and drinks. The strangers had slowly become dull, however, as they were all little, easy games to be played while pleasantly tipsy. Zym played them all beautifully, and she played her own part as the sweet girl they got to dance with once and thought about later, but she wanted more tangible fun than just that. She was about to pick up a flute of champagne to drown her mild sorrows when her gaze alighted on a true friend. 

“Lovely Mareona!” she squealed and rushed to her side, her hand immediately finding her friend’s and squeezing tightly. The gods should be trembling in their assumedly beautiful boots at the sight of Mareona for she rivaled even them. She stepped back to admire the elf in her total glory, wiggling in place and causing her own glittering skirt to swirl about her legs. “You truly live up to your title of lovely, Mareona.” 

As she finished speaking, the band started to play another song. One of slow, whimsical, and sweeping chords and tunes that Zym interrupted with a shrill gasp. 

“Oh, I know this song! Dance with me, please, I’ll lead and everything so it doesn’t matter if you know it ‘cause I know it,” she said incredibly quickly as she drew them close together again. “Please, Mareona?”

Rinnil listened to the lilac tiefling with growing amusement. He’d never heard someone talk so casually about things such as murderers and robbery. He almost out of habit started to grow suspicious of how she spoke of such things. He could feel himself closing off mentally, just as she pushed a bag of roasted chestnuts towards him. He assessed her with an arched eyebrow as he took the bag. As she spoke, he began to soften a bit. Her words seemed to carry more familiarity than malevolence.

“Uh…” He thought for a moment, but came up empty. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve never really had a closet, either… Clothes?” He shrugged, not being able to come up with anything more interesting. “Not dead bodies, though, so don’t worry.”

Zym twisted her mouth in discontent at his answer. “How terribly sensible of you, but I guess the lack of dead stuff is a comfort,” she muttered as she shucked another chestnut. “I think I’d like one of just costumes too. Also clothes, but I don’t really have enough clothes to bother. But costumes are fun. If I had a closet of those I’d just put one on when I’m glum or bored and flounce about. Or stomp about. Whatever the costume called for.”

Zym sighed with all the mournfulness she was capable of in the moment, which was very little, and stared out at the passing crowds. She’d like a closet, but she wouldn’t particularly like to settle down in a house with a closet. Her bag of holding could be a closet, but it was so much more fun to carry other oddities around with her than changes of clothes. 

“Oh,” she cooed in sudden remembrance. “What nuts you don’t finish, you can re-roast later with honey. Then they’re extra crunchy and they’re sweet! Maybe a closet of just sweets would be nice also.”

“Croquet? Oh, yeah! Did I not ever tell you I was a croquet player?” they said, having absolutely no idea what the hell croquet was. “Well, I used to be. Played on a team from… Crowmire. Yep, the Crowmire… Bumfuzzles. Undefeated for three seasons straight. Ever heard of us?” They clenched their teeth, eyes wide. What the fuck were they saying? They pursed their lips, because it was the only suitable alternative to physically covering their mouth with their hands to shut up.

“Hey do you wanna get a drink? Catch up some more?” They asked, desperate to change the subject, and also because they still did want to try and figure out as much about their lapse in memory as they could.They didn’t wait for a response, locking their arm into Zym’s and patrolling for a place that might serve alcohol. They realized, perhaps a bit too late, that they were in unfamiliar territory. They smiled.

“I’m not familiar with the area,” Leo admitted, because for some reason that was a qualifiable truth, “You know any good spots?“

Zym gasped in delight as her old workplace proximity associate spoke and clapped her hands. “That is the best name I’ve ever heard, Leo!” she said. “I’ve never heard of them so those seasons musta been awhile ago, but nice all the same.”

“Oh sure,” she agreed readily. She rarely said no to a drink and she knew a dozen and three places all within a few minutes walking distance from where they were. She didn’t protest the sudden manhandling and instead took over just as roughly once she realized that Leo was clueless. “There’s Boofard’s Bar and Brill around the corner. It has a big yellow sign with the name on it outside and I think today they have fried cheese curds,” she said as they walked. 

She steered them around the corner and sure enough the establishment’s assaultively yellow sign stood out like a beacon. “Also they have karaoke on Tuesdays. Do you sing?”

For Kit, it always seemed much, much easier to be someone else. Even if that someone was almost identical to her save for physical features and religious loyalties, it still felt like Kit had infinite more amounts of control when she wore someone else’s face. At least, Kit thought, this person’s less of an asshole than the last person who recognized one of my faces. That thought did little to comfort her. She still felt vulnerable, and she still hated it. But she didn’t run, and when Zym did continue her rampage of curiosity, she fought her instinct to lie. Crafting another web of lies seemed all too exhausting now.

“I’m not running a scheme,” Kit sighed, shaking out her shock of white hair with a hand. She wasn’t about to share all the details of her deity, but she hoped to find a way to satiate Zym enough to stifle any further questions. “Obsidian is sacred to my god, and the paint was for painting symbols, not pebbles. I’m not a scammer, I’m just…trying to reach out to my deity in peace.”

"Oh,” said Zym, her mind snagging on the phrase ‘in peace.’ She often invaded and destroyed peace so there was no wonder that this person seemed so very tired around her. Or maybe having a deity was absolutely exhausting. Zym wouldn’t know, but she knew plenty about being told to go away to leave people in peace. “Well, I hope the gold I gave you on fear of my life helps with the rocks and the god and the rocks for the god. And more fun stuff like... not rocks.”

She worried the fabric of her skirt between her fingers as she beheld the changeling for a long, arduous and silent minute. “I’ll just—” Zym pointed past Kit and edged around them, keeping close to the wall more for their benefit than hers, and hopped the last few steps to stand on the opposite side of them. “I was going this way. If you ever want to scam, you know, believe it or not I’m really good at it so let me know! If you want to. I’m around,” Zym rambled and continued to point behind and around her in vague directions. “So, I’ll just leave you to whatever it is that you do now.”

With that, Zym turned to continue hurrying down the street to her destination. 

Avi was fairly oblivious, but he wasn’t a complete lost cause. He’d clearly struck a chord with something he said, and he couldn’t miss the way Zym struggled to seem as upbeat as before. Though it wasn’t rare that strangers opened up to him, it wasn’t often that they started crying even before sharing their name. Immediately he was blanketed in guilt, wondering exactly what he’d said to illicit such a reaction. How had they even gotten to that point in the conversation? Didn’t it start innocently enough, laughing at some guards and making up stories? Luckily, Avi wasn’t one to shy away from difficult interactions, so long as they had little to do with him and whatever battles he was facing.

Clearly, Zym wanted to move on from whatever had caused her to falter, and Avi had enough experience with people that he wasn’t about to inquire further. Instead, he dug in his bag and recovered the loaf of fresh bread he’d bought earlier. He folded back the cloth it was wrapped in and tore off a piece for himself. “That would definitely make them very mean and not worth it,” he started, offering the still-warm loaf to Zym. “Part of being a person is accepting people’s faults and learning how to bridge the gaps between your differences. And I would hope that my brother - should I have one, figuratively speaking - wouldn’t just give up on me because he found parts of my personality to be unlike his. But I suppose that’s not always a given, and that is unfortunate.”

“Do you want to look at the fruit with me, Zym Fool?”

Of all the things Zym had been offered in the past, fresh bread had never been one of them. It seemed silly now. She laughed and wiped her eyes with her sleeve before tearing herself off a hunk. Flakes of crust tumbled into her lap, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care about the crumbs itching their way into the tulle’s weave. “Thank you,” she mumbled before taking a bite. She hoped, ardently, that if this man did have a brother, that he was a kind one. 

She couldn’t help but laugh again at Avi’s offer and her gaze darted up to the fruit sellers across the square. They offered a veritable rainbow of produce from oranges to out-of-season pomegranates. There was little that druids couldn’t figure out how to grow, though, regardless of available sunshine. “I have always been partial to dragonfruits,” she said, her previous cheer inching back in. “But I’m always disappointed when they don’t hatch into dragons.” 

She hopped off her perch only to find one of her feet had fallen asleep. She stomped several times to chase away the pins and needles and made no attempt to make her action seem dignified. “I would be honored!” she crowed when she finally stilled. “Have you ever had a persimmon?” 

Gil blew off her statement with a wave of his hand. “I ain’t scared of any needles, miss.” He paused, hesitating, before adding, “Maybe a bit. Just a lil’. They’re like spears, but real tiny and goes under your skin without makin’ you bleed. If they’re good at it, that is.”

He thought about it for a bit, scratching his temple and putting on a truly serious face, which probably looked a little odd on him. “My father has some cool designs, a lot of ‘em related to weapons and the like. I’ve been wantin’ something similar. A sword or maybe a hammer down my arm. I’m a squat guy, so havin’ more delicate lines might get lost in all the muscles. I’d still love some, though. I like the dwarvish designs I’ve seen about, but they’re kinda limited, in my opinion. I like words. Some runes along the weapon, maybe.”

While talking about it was all well and good, it was different from going out and actually doing it. His family had never been against tattoos. As mentioned, his father had several, and he had some aunts and uncles with some arm, shoulder and back tattoos. He regarded his newfound companion. “Would you be opposed to helpin’ me with that, Ms. Zym? I know we just met, but I’m gettin’ a good vibe from you, and I like havin’ good sources when I go and get some changes to myself. Be it a tattoo or a new cut.” He ran a hand through his glorious mane. “This beauty doesn’t maintain itself, after all.”

Zym’s lips formed a perfect ‘o’ as she straightened up on the barrel and shook her arms in glee. “I would love to help! Yes, please. Oh, I know so many tattoo artists. There are so many, oh no. Uhm,” she trailed off in thought and ran through a mental tally of the artists she knew and knew of. Some of them were thankfully deceased which narrowed down the options, but there were still so many. “There’s Ballbard here in Khaggon. He’s dwarvish and he specializes in weapons and sticky-pointy things. Just decorative stuff in the ouch department like you describe. Hm, there’s also Svilt in Myrefall but... no she’s in prison on unrelated charges.” 

Zym shrugged, letting her mind free again. “There are so many to choose from. But I’m always around if you ever want to meet up and go get one. I still have a whole other hand to get tattooed,” she said and wiggled her still naked, totally purple arm in his face. “Until then, though, I have to scram. I have an appointment to make soon.”

They smiled, happy that the tiefling seemed convinced enough that they remembered her. 

The bit about them not being her type was a bit appalling- Leo liked to think they were everyone’s type. They made it a point to clench their jaw, though, when the subject of their bone structure was brought up.

“I live in Khaggon now. Trying to do my own thing, you know? I’ve been knitting a lot. Don’t know why I felt compelled to tell you that, but” what if she could help them figure out some of the blank spots in their memory? They’d already lied, as it was. From what Leo could gauge of her response, the two of them were at least cordial- Leo was pretty sure she had used the word bud- but it would have been awkward to fess up now, right? They decided it would have been smarter to play it cool, to keep it quiet. Maybe they could ease into the conversation later.

Eager to change the subject from themselves, Leo, nodded to the girl to walk with them: “What’s been up with you? Live here now? Looking for work or something?”

“Oh, yay,” she said, smiling widely. “Knitting is lovely! Probably. I have no idea I’ve never knitted. Do you use your fingers for that? Or is that the same thing as croquet?” she asked all very fast. She knew what knit-wear was, but she’d never stopped to think of how it was made. A picture of a little old lady with tiny swords and a pile of wool came to mind, but obviously, going by Leo’s appearance, little old ladies weren’t necessarily the visual norm for knitters. She belatedly realized that she had meant to say “crochet” instead of “croquet,” but figured it was more pertinent to move on to more important things: herself.

“Stuff and no,” she replied. “I don’t live anywhere, I just meander in vague directions and end up places. I mosey with no intent.” Zym shrugged as she kept pace with her old acquaintance. “And no I’m not looking for work right now. I just got out of a job and it… didn’t go so well.” She grimaced, hiding true pain behind exaggerated expression. “So not much is new with me. Like I said, I’m moseying. I might try knitting now that I have free time. Or crochet.” Zym stuck her lower lip out and pouted in thought for a long moment. 

A harried looking man bumped shoulders with her and made her stumble into her companion’s before she could right herself. 

“Actually, I think I’d be better at croquet than knitting. Do you know how to play croquet?”

Thalra grinned unabashedly, a light purple blush flushing her cheeks once she saw that Zym approved of her dish. It was a rare occasion that she had anyone over whose opinions she truly regarded as important, and even rarer that she put an emotional stake into the dishes she cooked for her guests. It pleased her that someone beyond her and the people who had crawled up from the Underdark could appreciate the food that came from such a desperate place. She breathed out a relieved little laugh before she started to dig into her own plate. The taste would probably never be exactly how she remembered it. The mushrooms had been darker in the Underdark, and her mother had always added something to them that she couldn’t really place. It was likely that it was some ingredient exclusive to the lands below the ground and she’d never find it unless she ventured there herself. But for now, it was enough to make her think of a family gathered around a small table and forget that most nights she ate alone.

She hummed, gathering up some of the sauce from the plate with her fork, and thought on Zym’s question. “If you were a client, I’d tell you there was nothing I wasn’t good at,” she said, waggling her eyebrows at Zym. “Truthfully though, I’m talentless at a great many things. I couldn’t win an arm-wrestling competition to save my life, but I can fake just about anything else if I smile wide enough.” To demonstrate, her smile shifted into something more flirtatious, eyelashes fluttering low as one hand lifting up from the table to snap her fingers. All at once the candles in the room flickered out, leaving everything in shadow. With her other hand, she quickly picked up her fork and stabbed one of the mushrooms on Zym’s plate and popped it into her mouth. Then she snapped again and the candles all re-ignited with flickering red-orange light.

“It’s about distraction, in the end. Like a magic trick.”

Thalra’s smile reeled Zym in with ease, but of course she felt no need to put up any resistance against the woman’s wiles to begin with. With the addition of her fluttering lashes, Thalra’s face alone became deadly and inescapable. No wonder so many men and women paid to become lost in her face and her eyes and her smile. And of course her body, but Zym felt entirely content already with just her smiles directed at her. Her silly grin before, though, as she’d blushed lilac, had been more disarming than all of her skilled, intentional flirtations combined. It felt meant for her rather than ready made and reproduced.

 She blinked at it went dark, but she could hear the other woman’s shifting and feel the current of air before her shift ever so slightly. 

Once the light returned, Zym, sculpted into uncharacteristic seriousness, trailed her eyes from her plate, now woefully one mushroom short, across the table and up to Thalra’s face. Her lovely, wondrous and chewing face. “Pretty sure that’s stealing,” she said, her facade of gravity fracturing the longer she tried to maintain it. “And I should know,” she said, strangled laughs breaking out from her throat as her face remained serious. “Because I’m a thief.” She burst out laughing at the word ‘thief,’ her act entirely shattered as she threw her head back and guffawed. 

“I do adore magic tricks,” she admitted, voice high and squeaking, once she’d gotten herself under control. Without any flare or majesty, Zym reached across the table and speared one of Thalra’s mushrooms and ate it immediately. “I’ve never been very good them, though,” she said innocently as she swallowed. “It hasn’t slowed me down, but it’s not as much fun.” She tossed Thalra a playful wink and went on eating. Each bite was as good as the last and she found herself humming with pleasure again. 

“If you could be good—no, perfect—at something you can’t currently do, what would it be?” she asked suddenly. She hoped by this time that Thalra was used to her flights of fancy and wouldn’t brush her off like her comrades. 

Even though they couldn’t remember much about the last several years of their life, Leo was still fairly rooted in the fact that they hated Myrefall. It was all a bit too political for their taste, social climbers doing whatever they could to reach the top. Their mother was born here, which spoke volumes as to the person she turned out to be. It was all porcelain masks with painted smiles, snide side glances, chins tipped so far into the air that they could probably smell the rain even as it was being formed in the clouds above. Still, after having so many close calls with money, Leo had made the decision to keep a pretty steady cash flow for the time being and, say what you will about the people who lived in the city, but Myrefall was always a sure bet for some kind of odd job.

They walked out of a restaurant pocketing a couple gold pieces, half smile on their face. Twenty minutes of sweeping and wiping down tables, and now they were a step closer to meeting their rent requirement.

“You!” They caught the girl’s gaze instantly. Oh, gods, they thought, Did I sleep with her or something? Wracking their brain for a name they couldn’t recall, they smiled, friendly enough, closed the distance between them until they were standing face to face. For whatever reason, Leo thought it would be better to just pretend to know her, rather than dragging her through the entire sob story.

“Hey… you! You look great! Actually I, uh, don’t work there anymore.” 

They squinted, looking at her with genuine hope she would have an answer:

“Or… do I?”

"Huh?” asked Zym, characteristically articulate as ever, with a frown. Her smile never wavered and neither did her bouncing in place, however. A chuckled escaped and in a moment she was giggling fully. “I don’t know! Do you? Why would I know that it’s been ages since I’ve had a pickup. At least a year I think, but I’ve been busy.” 

Once her mirth petered out, she looked the other being up and down as if his appearance would explain why he wasn’t inhabiting the area behind a shop counter and was instead wandering the wilds of Myrefall. “Good joke, bud,” she said for lack of anything with greater substance. “You look okay, too, I guess. Not my type, as you know, but still... solid. Solid in the bone structure—So what’s up?” she asked, cutting off her rambling. “It’s just been awhile so I just wanted to say the usual ‘hello’ and ‘how are you’.”

Rinnil shrugged a little and nodded in agreement. Yes, there were much worse places than Myrefall. He’d been born in one. But, at least in his mind, the city would forever be marked in his mind as the place where his own foolishness had separated him from his sister for a century. “I guess Myrefall is the closest thing I have to home.” He didn’t know if he should feel good or sad about that. Or if he should feel anything for it. He shrugged again. In the eyes of most, he and Thalra hadn’t been a child when they were both sold off. By the time it had happened, he hadn’t even considered himself to be a child for a very long time. “No, I wasn’t a kid.” But he didn’t mention how old he had been.

He widened his eyes at her speaking of bodies in closets. The subject matter didn’t disturb him. It didn’t even surprise him. What surprised him was how casually this upbeat lilac tiefling spoke about finding corpses in the closets of the rich. He let out a soft huff of a laugh at the mention of the necromancer. “Maybe he was just a murderer,” Rinnil suggested.

“Well of course he was a murderer too,” she said with an impatient huff and a roll of her eyes. “Where do you think he got some of the bodies from? I forget what we were there to do, I think I was just taking scrolls and the like, but I know he also bought them from other murderers... It’s how we tracked him. Even the nastiest people tend to do paperwork which is very odd. Or they tell other people about their nastiness and then those other people talk. Maybe he was just an especially dumb murderer.” 

A vendor pushed a rolling cart past their perch and with a sudden and delighted grin Zym reached forward to snag two paper bags off the back. Just as the vendor turned around in anger, she flipped the coins to him, her impish grin still in place. Without missing a beat she thrust one of the small bags towards her companion. “Roasted chestnuts?” she offered cheerily. She placed her own bag in her lap, glad to have warmth to replace the cocoa. She grabbed one and shucked the remnants of the shell off before popping the entire thing into her mouth. 

“I don’t know what I’d have a closet full of,” she continued. “I’ve never had a proper closet, though, so maybe that’s the first step. What would you put in a closet? Hopefully not the deceased ‘cause then I’m gonna have to take the chestnuts back.”

He had never the term ‘horn-hats’ used to describe the decorated ends of horns before, but that was an expression he filed away for later use. It was an excellent term, one he was confused at never thinking of before with how much sense it made.

“One color is borin’, I’ll agree on that,” Gil said with a single nod. “A bit of brightness along with the regular makes both way better, in my opinion.”

He looked at her tattoos and gave them an appreciative look. “That’s from artistry right there, Ms. Zym! I’d love some of ‘em myself, but I’ve been terribly slow on that front.”

“I think that sounds grand,” he commented. “I’m not the biggest on jewels, but I can appreciate most colors on a good day.”

Zym smiled and admired her hand, wiggling her fingers and watching as the flowers shifted. “They’re great fun,” she said, “Once you get past the needles, but with the right artist it’s just about painless.” 

“What were you thinking of getting?” she asked and eyed him in the same manner she’d seen art critics scowl knowingly at a canvas. He’d suit most ideas, she thought, even flowers similar to her own, but perhaps he would be pretentious and get something with great meaning or social importance. Which was all well and good until those with important tattoos felt the need to explain them over and over. “I know a whole bunch of tattooers if you want any recommendations. I think you’d suit heavier outlines though. Thicker than mine, I mean.”